Rossi Urges Dorna to Stop Practice Cuts

Reigning MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi publicly expressed his disagreement with Dorna scrapping off all Friday practice sessions in the series. The MotoGP promoter already announced the cancellation of Friday's morning sessions for the entire 2009 season, while all the other practice and qualifying sessions were reduced to 45 minutes.

However, Dorna boss Carmelo Ezpeleta revealed he will push for the dissolution of all Friday action in the near future in an effort to further reduce costs inside the sport. The Italian rider thinks this action will be detrimental to the riders, as they will not have enough time to set up their bikes until the Sunday race.

“Now we have to wait until 10.30pm tomorrow to go onto the track and we have just the 45 minutes of free practice. We have a lot less work for the tires, but we have to concentrate and try to be quick to set up the bike because the time is less,” said Rossi.

“Now they're speaking a lot about 2010, but we have to wait a little bit to understand the economic situation for next year. I think now is the minimum amount of free practice. I hope for 2010 it doesn't change or get cut,” added the Italian rider.

Rossi was cautious when referring to the new changes for 2009 – long-life engines, sole tire supplier – as he expressed hopes it will not affect racing further more.

“I think we lost a lot of the show when we switched from 990cc to 800cc bikes and in the last year the races have been different compared with the old bikes. The engine rule is more a technical matter. We hope to have an engine with more life but more or less the same performance. Now everybody is on the same tires and maybe the situation will be clearer and I hope it will provide more excitement for everybody,” added the MotoGP champion.